What's the sixth stage?
by Winterfell's Vengeful Get
Summary: The fifth stage is acceptance, so what's the sixth stage? Clarisse finds out about Annabeth's infidelity and suffers the emotional aftermath. Sequel to "Just for tonight" and takes place before "Nightmare." Mentions of cheating, Pipbeth, Thalibeth inside. Claribeth. No flames.


Disclaimer: I own nothing

**The sixth stage is…?:**

Clarisse wasn't a professional when it came to psychology, far from it actually. She was a warrior first and foremost. All children of Ares were. She didn't know shit about psychology, sociology or personality studies. She didn't even know that much about grieving. But then, it wasn't exactly grieving someone's death that she was dealing with, was it? She did know that there were five stages considered to be attached. What were they again?

**The first stage: Denial**: It was the first stage, wasn't it? Denial was the first stage. Denial was such an easy affliction to suffer from, wasn't it? It was easy to deny that she hadn't seen the way Piper Mclean always stared at Annabeth from across the lunchroom and how her eyes would linger on the blonde when the daughter of Athena was sparring with one of the other campers. It was so easy too, to just dismiss Thalia and say that the daughter of Zeus saw Annabeth as only a little sister and nothing else. It wasn't to say that Clarisse was unaware of Annabeth's actions. She would, however be the first to say that the very idea that Annabeth would even think about committing an act of unfaithfulness was unimaginable to her. Annabeth was very loyal to her friends after all so one probably couldn't even comprehend how devoted she might be to a lover, however, Clarisse experienced that devotion every day, and she knew for a fact that Annabeth would never cheat on her. Never. It was a mistake-a false piece of information or a mistake in the information. Simple as that.

**The second stage: Anger**: Anger; the second stage, was a safe emotion. It didn't make you vulnerable to loneliness or sadness. Anger was anger; it just led back to clenched fists, blood boiling, teeth grinding and the incomprehensible need to make bones shatter. Anger was a familiar feeling for a child of Ares. After all, it was considered bizarre for any child of Ares to feel anything _except _rage. So it wasn't an odd occurrence at all when Clarisse's fist went through the wooden wall outside of her and her siblings' cabin when she saw Annabeth glance nervously at Piper one day. No; just an average child of Ares reaction, nothing more.

Of course, that was going to be a little harder to explain to Annabeth when Clarisse and Piper sparred and it ended with Clarisse on the daughter of Aphrodite's back with her knees digging into the younger demigod, grabbing at the other brunette's right arm and trying to rend it out of its socket, brown eyes filled with rage and hate before Annabeth ran over yelling for Clarisse to stop.

**The third stage: Bargaining**: Clarisse still had a hard time processing the memory of Aphrodite's words to her when the promiscuous deity informed her that Annabeth had cheated on her with Piper and Thalia. While denying what she had heard and physically lashing out at the goddess, effectively giving the flirtatious woman a couple of black eyes had been Clarisse's two initial primary impulses, after she absorbed this piece of news, she had said in a deathly quiet voice that there had to be a way that this was wrong. She hissed and growled that Aphrodite was lying. Once again, the daughter of war showed a complete lack of fear of a god. At Aphrodite's incredibly serious look, a face that Clarisse could never imagine the usually cheery deity bearing, the realization hit the brunette and soon she was pleading with the goddess of love to somehow reverse what she had learned. Oh begging…the daughter of Ares begging? Truly, this had been a cruelly comical couple of weeks for Clarisse.

**The fourth stage: Depression**: Ah, depression. Such a lovely emotion. So pure in the agony it produces. As it dawns on the brunette truly what it is that Annabeth did; the bare truth exposed to her brain like a stone defenseless from corroding thanks to the endless water trickling along its form, slowly and steadily chipping away at it over centuries, the daughter of Ares at long last breaks. She is satisfied for only a few minutes upon smashing a few wooden tables in her time alone or kicking rocks into the lakes, but subsequently felt all the energy drain from her body, dropping to her knees and burying her face in her hands, in a position so unlike any child of Ares, weeping. "Why, Anna? Why?" She whispered through her tears.

**The fifth stage: Acceptance**: It happened. There was no way around it. It happened. Annabeth had been unfaithful to her. She could deny it, she could scream and smash walls all she wanted about it, she could plead to all the gods, even to Kronos to let it not be true, she could cry and sob about it, but it wouldn't change the facts. Annabeth had betrayed her. Annabeth's infidelity was an inevitable actuality. Annabeth had had sex with Piper and Thalia. Clarisse could admit it now. No matter how much it hurt, it was the reality here. Throwing a fit, crying, praying to the gods or hurting someone wouldn't change what her lover did. Now it seemed, that the only thing that actually could make this better somehow if there was indeed _anything _to salvage at all, was to confront Annabeth. She couldn't keep this buried, now that she knew and accepted it.

**The sixth stage…..? **What was the stage after acceptance? Was there even one? Clarisse was sure that anyone would say no, that there wasn't. But Clarisse wasn't sure if that was possible. It was bizarre to imagine that there wasn't a sixth stage, because Clarisse was almost positive that she was in it now. Her steely resolve, her unusually serene mind, her body moving faster and with more agility that it had ever done before in combat…..all because she was now at peace. Her brothers and sisters didn't know what to make of it and frankly were a little freaked out. When Annabeth approached Clarisse, unsettled at the very idea of meeting Clarisse's gaze, more than sure that the other demigod knew about her adultery, the daughter of Ares had just taken hold of Annabeth's wrist and pulled the blonde against her chest, holding the smaller girl against her protectively, laying her chin on Annabeth's head. This odd sensation was the purest thing Clarisse had ever felt. She accepted what happened, knew that there was nothing that she could have done about it. So now all she could do was move forwards. She loved Annabeth.


End file.
